Attacks on women continued during May 1920, with county Galway accounting for a further one before the end of the month.   On the night of the 23 May about five miles from Tuam at a place called Cuslough, Castlemoyle a party of five men visited a house called Mannions at 11.30pm demanding to know where Anne Devine was. Strangers in the area the men presented themselves in a menacing manner and entered her bedroom af...

  The growing social anarchy and clamour for land reared its head in county Roscommon in May 1920 when a young man named Peter Kenny was murdered at a place called Aghagad, county Roscommon.   The dispute in question arose when a number of claims were made on Miss McConn who held nine or ten acres of land which had been let for grazing. On a number of occasion stocks of animals were driven off the land and when retu...

  In the month of May 1920 the IRA in south Kildare targeted the town of Athy and its hinterland. First the Customs and Excise Offices in the town were broken into in the middle of the month and all the documents relating to income tax were seized.   In a well-coordinated attack no other document was touched in the building. In the same week an aged couple called Loughman were raided by masked and armed men ...

    The murder of Mark Clinton in Meath in May 1920 sent shockwaves through the county and further afield.   Murdered while ploughing a field belonging to his uncle, Clinton was the victim of a widespread campaign to grab land and re-divide it. In this case of Clinton the perpetrators of the crime were former soldiers who used the anarchy then prevalent to try and seize the land. One of them, William Gordon, w...

  May 1920 would see the Irish country house become a prime target of IRA brigades across the country who for months previous had raided such houses in the hope of securing weapons. Now their attention turned to arson.   The month of May also witnessed an upsurge in the number of raids for arms, which included ‘sporting guns’ as the IRA wished to add to their arsenal. These included In Ballymote, county ...

  The shooting of an IRA volunteer in county Kerry in May 1920 resulted in a dramatic speech the following week at Tralee petty sessions.   As E.M.P. Wynne Resident Magistrate made his way to the village of Causeway in county Kerry on 11 May 1920 he was ambushed by an IRA party led by a man called Mike Nolan. Hoping to apprehend Wynne and take him hostage in an effort to prevent him presiding at the petty sess...

  After a weekend of rioting and outrage in Derry, the Evening Herald newspaper described as series of ‘brutal attacks’ carried out by a ‘band of blackguards’ on the night of 17 May 1920.   While the attacks were in the main perpetrated by nationalist ‘rowdies’, it was also evident that those of the Unionist persuasion also took part in the rioting and general lawlessness throughout the night. Fear...

  In what the Belfast Newsletter referred to as the ‘half century’ there were over fifty outrages reported by Dublin Castle on a single day in mid-May.   The disused military barracks in Mitchelstown, county Cork was destroyed by a group of twenty men. In counties Cork, Sligo, Kerry, Kilkenny, Limerick, Mayo, Meath, Cavan and Down – eleven in total. In county Down the burning of the RIC barracks at Laure...

  During the morning of 13 May 1920 an incident in Downpatrick, county Down created a sensation across Ireland following the raid on an excise office in the town.   Aroused by the screams of the caretaker, Mrs McBride, the nearby Revd T.G. Wilkinson, Minor Canon of Down Cathedral was shot by armed raiders as he went to try and follow the raiders. Armed with revolvers and disguised, about ten men described by many ne...

  The night of 12/13 May 1920 was one of sensation across the country as the IRA carried out over 100 hundred attacks, mirroring what had been done on the previous Easter Sunday.   Among the reported attacks included 61 on barracks, 30 attack on tax offices with papers and books burned, mail cars held up in several counties and individual assaults. The series of raids on income tax offices, which numbered in t...